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Monday, 16 June 2014

Sense & Sensibility by Joanna Trollope

Sense & Sensibility by Joanna Trollope is the first book
of ‘The Austen Project’, Harper Collins’ project to pair ‘authors of global
literary significance with Jane Austen’s six complete works to write their own
unique take on Jane Austen’s novels’. The fanfare in the media accompanying
this series surprised me a little, when you consider how many books there are
already in the Austenesque genre, albeit of variable quality, but I’m not going
to complain about some bestselling authors having a go! Please note that I am
working on the assumption that you’re familiar with the plotline of Sense & Sensibility by Jane Austen; if you’re unfamiliar with it there may be potential
spoilers ahead.

I haven’t read anything by Joanna Trollope previously but I
know she’s a well respected author so I had high hopes. Here, the Dashwood
family had been living for the past decade or so at Norland, the home of Mr
Dashwood’s rich uncle. Although the uncle welcomed them with open arms, he was
traditional in outlook, and partly due to Mr Dashwood never marrying the girl’s
mother, Belle and partly to keep the estate together, the estate has been left
to John, who is Henry Dashwood’s son from his marriage. Henry died in hospital
following an asthma attack, and while he was ill in hospital he asked John to
look after his girls. However, John’s ideas of looking after aren’t what his
father had in mind.

In Sense & Sensibility Mr Dashwood leaving his widow and
children to the care of his son was understandable, especially if the estate was
entailed. He may have had very little to leave them that wasn’t tied to the
estate, but in this day and age that is less likely. In fact, Elinor reflects:

‘Was it an adventure not to leave a responsible will that
would secure the future of the person you’d had three daughters with – or was
it fecklessness?’

I couldn’t help but understand this point of view, although
there are plenty of people who just trust to chance for their family’s future.
It does seem fairly irresponsible, particularly knowing that your family is
essentially living off the hospitality of a relative.

The Dashwood ladies are not left entirely penniless though,
although they seem to think that they are. They are left ‘only’ £200,000! This is after being allowed to live in a
stately home, gratis for over a decade. This kind of attitude makes it hard to
sympathise with their situation. For most people in the UK this would not be an
insignificant inheritance but they are unimpressed with it. Even being
given a 4 bedroom cottage to live in for low rent doesn’t impress them. Instead they lament that it
isn’t more picturesque. These are some deeply ungrateful ladies, Elinor
excepted.

Elinor is studying, doing a degree in architecture, but she
has to give it up. I’m not sure it was ever made clear why. I would have
assumed the most likely scenario would have been that she’d get a loan and some
student accommodation for the last year but she doesn’t even seem to think
about it, instead resigning herself to the thought that she’ll have to get a
job. The fact she didn’t even think about continuing with her degree surprised
me, as surely her earning power would be greater with a degree in architecture?
As it happens, Elinor lands herself a job earning a respectable £1,500 per
month, though Marianne (who earns, and intends to earn, a big fat zero) deems
this a pittance.

It doesn’t seem to cross the minds of Belle or Marianne that
they could possibly work. Belle hasn’t worked in years, but you’d think having
a family would motivate her to think about it, at the very least. It doesn’t,
and she selfishly allows Elinor to sacrifice her degree rather than lift a
finger herself. Marianne can’t work, because she has asthma and we are told she
has a tendency to depression. I am not hugely familiar with the condition of asthma,
but as far as I am aware most asthmatics are able to work. As for depression,
the particular depressive symptoms that Marianne suffered from were described,
but you never saw them. Instead you just saw her being vastly self-centred, for example, doing things she knew were likely to set off an asthma attack because she was so moved by whatever emotion she was experiencing.

Elinor’s family accept her self-sacrifice without question
or appreciation. To me, this made them
far more unlikeable than their Sense & Sensibility counterparts. Certainly Austen's Elinor took a lead in settling them in their new life when strictly speaking
her mother should have been doing it, however, what did she give up to do so? She
would have been going to live with them anyway. I couldn’t decide whether Joanna Trollope's Belle
and Marianne were selfish, which is what led Elinor to have to sacrifice for
them, or whether she enabled their behaviour. If she’d left a vacuum, would
Belle have stepped up to the task? I think people are expected to stand on
their own feet more these days.

Another thing which didn’t work for me in a modern setting
was people’s reactions to Marianne. She is ravishingly beautiful, which makes
men fall over themselves to protect her. I find this unlikely, and more than a
bit sexist; I don’t think most men are dying to be knights in shining armour for vulnerable ladies! Her beauty also allows her to be childish, self-indulgent, deeply selfish and generally
pretty obnoxious. She behaves like a surly teen. Such behaviour is understandable
in Margaret, who is so much younger, but in somebody of Marianne’s age it’s
just weird. Yes, Marianne in Austen’s original book was quite self-centred, but
having grown up in a much more sheltered environment it’s more understandable,
and she was a much more likeable character. To be fair, Marianne does show
growth of character by the end of the novel, and is much improved for it.

Once the Dashwoods move to Devon we meet some new
characters. Sir John in particular is a scream, being as thick skinned as a
rhino. He seems to find Marianne’s immature rudeness hilarious. Which is just
as well. We also meet John Willoughby. I loved his introduction:

‘Margaret could see that on the scale of hotness, he
registered fairly close to a full ten. He was – amazing.’

We also meet Sir John’s wife, and his mother-in-law, Mrs
Jennings. This part was another oddity; these days I don’t think somebody would
see late teenage/early 20s girls as a likely match for a mid thirties man, at least until they got to know them.
Certainly there are relationships which have these age gaps, but people in
general would be less likely to matchmake between people with this kind of age
gap. There were a few references to Colonel Brandon liking young people which
made him seem almost like a bit of a perve, especially as he is quite old
in his outlook, and Marianne is extremely childish. Obviously in the early
1800s a bride who was late teens marrying a man in his mid thirties would have
been much more common.

The main thing that struck me as anachronistic about this
book was the characters attitudes to marriage; I would say that most teenagers
living in Britain today (with the exception of people of strong religious belief) wouldn’t
expect to marry before the age of 25-30 or may not plan to marry at all.
However, Elinor, Marianne and Lucy Steele all seem to think there is nothing
unusual about marrying at the age of 20 or so. It was very strange, as was
Elinor’s attitude towards Edward’s secret engagement:

‘I don’t know if he wants to be with Lucy or not, but he’s
not going to let her down because he’s been let down himself by so many people
all his life that he can’t bring himself to do it to someone else, whatever the
cost to him is.’

Personally, I think attitudes have changed greatly in this
regard. Firstly, it is not dishonourable for a man to break off an engagement. Secondly, very few people would expect an engagement made between teenagers
to be morally binding. Thirdly, I would say that it would be the prevalent
view that it is less honourable to marry somebody who you don’t love than to
break off the engagement and give them a chance to find somebody who really
loves them.

In summary, this book didn’t quite work for me. I think for
the story to work in a modern setting more changes needed to be made. The
attitudes of the characters were strangely outdated, which made some of the
behaviour implausible, and in some cases changed your perception of the
characters. I haven't read any other modern updates of Sense & Sensibility, but I will definitely try to; I am hopeful there is a way to make the story work both as a retelling and as a modern book in its own right.

2 comments:

Well Ceri you finally made it!! lol this is not the first review I have read in regards to this book! Great analysis of the book but I think for now, I will not be rushing to push it to the front of my TBR pile Thanks :)

The behaviour at the book really put me off the family, how ungrateful they were in regards to the £200,000 so I put the book aside for a long time. The worst of it was that it's a library book! Every time I renewed it I was worried that somebody else would want it and I'd have to take it back part-read. I have heard that the second book in the series, Northanger Abbey by Val Macdermid (can't spell it!) is very good but I'm planning to read the original Northanger Abbey again first.

About Me

I've loved reading for as long as I can remember. I usually read romance, both historical and contemporary but I'm not usually a big fan of chick-lit. My favourite author is Jane Austen, and I really enjoy reading stories inspired by her work. I also love many of the works of L M Montgomery, Georgette Heyer and Mrs Gaskell, amongst others.